An asteroid the size of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, will pass near Earth on Wednesday evening – but at a safe distance.
At 7:46 p.m. ET, asteroid 2005 YY128, which is expected to be more than 4,000 feet broad, will fly within 2.8 million miles of our planet, the closest in 400 years.
Is Asteroid A Threat To Humans?
Still, that’s approximately 12 times the distance between Earth and the moon, so astronomers say there’s no way the asteroid will hit us on this pass.
According to NASA’s Centre for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), 2005 YY128 will be the fourth closest flyby among 35,000 historical and future asteroids to pass close to Earth between 1900 and 2200.
‘Yes, the asteroid is probably fairly large, possibly between 1,903 and 4,265 feet,’ said Paul Chodas, director of NASA’s Center of Near Earth Object Studies, to USA TODAY.
‘The asteroid poses absolutely no risk to humans,’ he stressed.
Chodas went on to say that if 2005 YY128 was a threat, NASA would have anticipated it back in 2005 or 2006, when the asteroid was originally discovered. And this would have pushed astronomers to find a means to redirect it.
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NASA’s First Planetary Defense Test
In September 2022, NASA deployed a ship at 14,000 miles per hour to smash with asteroid Dimorphos.
The objective was to see if this method could change the path of an impending asteroid. After colliding with the Dimorphos at 14,000 miles per hour, NASA’s DART probe conducted the first planetary defense test.
NASA tweeted shortly after the DART probe hit the 560-foot asteroid, which was around 6.7 million miles from Earth. Scientists believe the asteroid’s orbit was disrupted by the collision, which cut out a crater and flung streams of rock and dirt into space.
NASA aims to have pushed Dimorphos into a smaller orbit, saving 10 minutes off the time it takes to circle Didymos, which is presently 11 hours and 55 minutes. The space probe used kinetic impact, which entails sending one or more massive, fast spacecraft into the path of a near-Earth object.
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